Observing, reflecting, designing.

I had the opportunity to attend Drupalcon London this week and to talk some more about the Prairie Initiative – what is is, our goals, and the progress we’ve made so far. Unfortunately the audio in the session recording was very poor, so here’s an outline of what I presented.

Recently I came across a ‘register’ page on a Drupal site that was obviously Drupal (in a bad way). I thought – I wonder what it would be like for people who don’t know anyone in the Drupal community to come to Drupal.org and try to find how they can contribute their time, skills and experience to fixing the design of that page.

Try this exercise – go to Drupal.org homepage and log out. Now imagine you’re here looking to help out in whatever your area of expertise is (if you can’t think of anything, just pretend you want to help fix the usability and layout of that register form). Where would you go?

If you headed into Support and Community (which is probably the most sensible option) you’re hit with walls of text, no keywords that confirm that we want people like you and where you should go. Very little sign of a community at all, basically just a list of channels. It’s less than inspiring and a little intimidating.

IRC is not a solution – it scales badly, it’s intimidating and unfriendly if you’re new and unknown, and for a great swathe of us, it’s very unfamiliar.

Groups – try going there and logging out. This is also a pretty poor introduction to the community for newcomers.

Forums are also pretty haphazard and not really a recommended entry point.

If you decide to ‘register’ (for what, it’s not really clear) you enter a process that is riddled with small but unrelenting errors or bad experiences – from the lack of client side validation on the forms, to the ‘access denied’ heading once you’ve completed the form successfully, to the personality free email you receive (and the fact that we have even designed the sign up process this way – making the user do the work to reduce the spam on Drupal.org presumably)

Having completed the registration process, you’re left pretty much stranded on the final page (which announces that it’s unsubscribed you from a mailing list you’ve never heard of) – the dashboard for newbies doesn’t take advantage of a great opportunity to help you get started. Fortunately, in the journey that I was exploring – search does work, and if you make your way to the Usability Group page (which has been pretty well thought out and structured to be newbie friendly), you’re set – you can actually find some likeminded people and start finding your feet in the community.

These are all little things – things that could reasonably easily be fixed. And some might say that if you can’t handle this then you’re probably no use to us anyway – Drupal gets a whole lots hairier than this! And that’s a fair point – afterall, if you do make it through the onboarding experience, sooner or later you’ll meet the issue queue….*gulp*

The onboarding experience into the Drupal community on Drupal.org is a bit of a car wreck. Sure, it’s just a series of little things that could be relatively easily fixed – that’s not the point. The point is that we either have never bothered to check that the sign up / onboarding experience is any good, or it’s not high on our priority list. No one owns this job. This tells us some interesting things about the Drupal community and sends some messages about what we value:

We don’t really value our newcomers or care about the experience that new people coming to join our community and contribute have when the try to get involved.

We don’t really care about the quality of the products we create and the spaces we reside in (there’s no broken windows policy on Drupal.org), we don’t take pride in our flagship(?) website.

People who do manage to get involved using this process are to be admired for their determination!

There is an alternative onboarding experience – person to person mentoring and hand holding, particularly for those who have been hired by a Drupal shop or are working in an organisation that is adopting Drupal. This is a good process – perhaps it’s the one we really care about? Perhaps we don’t really want people to randomly stumble into the community? Perhaps – these are all questions to think about…

We need to work out what our position on all of this is.

What kind of people do we want to have in our community?

How do we want to ‘recruit’ them – do we want random people coming to the community from our website? (hobbyists etc?)

What kind of an experience do we want it to be to sign up to be a part of Drupal?

What kind of experience do we want to be to be an active contributor to Drupal?

How important is this to us? How much do we care?

It’s ok if we decide we don’t care about it so much. The right answer isn’t necessarily ‘the user experience must be fantastic’ but we should stop paying lip service and actually not doing anything about it, and not committing any resources to it.

We need a vision for what we want the experience of Drupal.org for new and long term contributors to be like.

Backcasting is a great exercise that helps us work out what we’re aiming for and then a roadmap/strategy to work towards that outcome.

For me, I think this is important. I believe that the way our spaces are designed is very influential on the way that we behave within them. Drupal the community and Drupal.org are both pretty good at tactical problem solving, but both pretty rubbish at defining and agreeing and acting on larger strategies.

This is what the Prairie Initiative is interested in – ways that we can design social spaces on Drupal.org that are more conducive to giving new contributors a better onboarding experience and that makes it a better, more productive environment for longer term contributors.

The Prairie Initiative is not a project. Rather, it is a family of projects that share a connection to a common set of goals. The goals of the Prairie Initiative projects are:

to improve the collaboration tools on Drupal.org so that we can do more and work better together and make Drupal better, faster; and

to grow the pool of contributors by making Drupal.org a better and easier place to become a contributor – to make it less intimidating to people who want to get started contributing.

Some of the projects within Prairie that we are moving forward with at the moment include:

Topic page – a place where activity from across the Drupal network can be aggregated and people interested in this topic can ‘follow’ the topic. This allows people to self identify their expertise, people to find likeminded peers in the community, people to find mentors, people can more easily keep up with activity on Drupal.org related to their topic.

Profile page – a better designed profile page allowing us to share our expertise and experience and interests and activities within and without of Drupal more easily, and a way to make the reputation system known to ‘insiders’ accessible to those who are new and as yet not well connected to the community.

Issue Queue – exploring ways that we can change the issue page so that it lets us work more effectively together.

Notifications – exploring how we can make it easier to keep up with activity on Drupal.org you’ll probably be interested in without requiring you to be on IRC, have people ping you links, or be scouring issue queues and groups endlessly to keep track.

I’ve been trying to do as much of this as I can in my spare time but – realistically – I’m not a great candidate to help lead this project. It really needs someone who works in a Drupal company and who gets some ‘gardening time’ (or equivalent) to work on community work without having to sacrifice income or time with their kids.

Having asked around a little to see if there might a chance of getting a little financial support so that I can work on this in place of client work, it seems clear that Prairie is currently not a very appealing investment.

I probably need to work on my pitch, I guess, but that’s pretty demotivating. Especially when you not only need someone like me doing cat herding, ‘product management’ and some UX work, but we really also need a tech lead (someone like this who, unfortunately, is much the same as me in terms of having no gardening time).If you’ve got time and inclination to take this on, step up. Otherwise, regretfully, it’s likely Prairie will flounder, as it has for the past month or so after an initial cracking start (this is entirely my fault and not for want of people willing to contribute their time).

I know this sounds like a huge critique of the work that was done by the redesign team and by those who continue to work on Drupal.org – please know that there are many, many things that need working on and people like Neil Drumm and Lisa Rex and others are doing great work that goes largely unrecognised and unthanked. This is absolutely NOT a criticism of their work and I’d like to thank them and the others who are working with them for continuing to incrementally improve Drupal.org.

We might have re-THEMED the entire site but there was a LOT that never had the chance to be reDESIGNED. These are very different things.

A few months ago the wonderful Giles Colborne and I were given an interesting challenge by Sjors Timmer and Matthew Solle who were organising the UXDO event for August. Would we run a session on Workshop Facilitation.

Of course we would, but the question was… could we run a workshop about workshop facilitation?

Well, it was certainly worth a shot.

And so it was that twenty something very meta workshop participants bravely joined us last week for a workshop on workshop facilitation. It went a little something like this….

Workshop Plan:

We posted our workshop plan, including timings, onto the wall.

The workshop was structured broadly following the KJ Technique with some collaborative affinity sorting and then ending with some group discussions on key topics. We structured the workshop in a way that promoted a pattern of widely exploring the breadth of the problem area, then synthesis or exploration of the patterns that emerge from our exploration and then consolidating into actions and findings.

7pm: Welcome

7.05pm: Private brainstorm (Exploring the problem space)

Question: What are the biggest challenges you face when putting on workshops?

Write challenges on to post it notes – one idea per post it notes, in capital letters using an appropriately heavy marker.

7.10pm: Post up

To save time we didn’t do the ideal thing of discussing each idea as they were called out (to
capture all the nuances). Instead we asked people to volunteer whether they had similar ideas and posted them in clusters. You wouldn’t want to do this in a ‘real’ workshop as you want to give people plenty of time for discussion.

7.40pm: Grouping and sorting

We did a collaborative affinity sort by gathered in small teams, giving each team some of the clusters of post-its and re-grouped the post-its into their final clusters. We labelled the clusters with problem statements. This allowed the group to understand what the real problems were and how issues that might on the surface appear different sometimes stem from the same problem.

7.55pm: Dot voting

We gave participants Three votes each to vote for the problems they felt were most significant in blocking their ability to run effective workshop sessions – these would be the topics participants wanted to discuss in more detail later in the evening.

8pm: 1-1 Ranking

Here we deviate a little from the KJ Method. We compared cards in pairs. Rank them all, according to the question ‘What is the bigger roadblock to you running an effective, productive workshop.

8.15pm: Group discussion

We broke into small groups and brainstorm the problems and solutions
Again, this took two parts: firstly, examine the problem – what is it? what causes it? – make notes about this at the top of the flip chart. Then solutions – what’s worked well? why? List ideas on the bottom half of the flip chart.

8.35pm: Groups present back
We heard from all the groups on their problems and solutions

8.58pm Wrap up and head to the pub! (Although, in all honestly, we did end up running a little late… too much interesting discussion!)

Workshop planning tips:

TIP: Workshops are about the attendees, not your designs. Turn your attention outward. Make
the participants feel valued and listened to.

TIP: Every workshop needs to go through a phase of expansion (where you gather ideas) and exploration (where you understand ideas) and consolidation (where you set the outcomes). Your workshop structure should follow this flow.

TIP: The attendees have given up their valuable time to be there – recognise and respect this. Be clear about what you need from them, plan well, get as much as you can out of the day and communicate it back.

TIP: We posted the agenda and timings up on a big sheet at the front of the room. The agenda is not a secret and making it visible helps everyone to know where they are and where they’re going. It also means you can discuss it and make visible changes (if you need to) during the workshop.

TIP: When you’re planning your workshop remember its important to leave plenty of time at the end for your wrap up. People need to be heard. We’ve been to workshops where the moderator has ended by saying ‘we don’t have time for a wash-up, but please think about what we’ve said today.’ What a let down. Make sure there’s enough time to go around the room one last time.

TIP Make sure they’re putting just one idea per Post-It. Post-Its are the atoms of your workshop – and you don’t want to split the atom in the middle of a workshop.

The outputs: Affinity sort

These are the problem statements (and the related post-its) that we gathered.

Before the workshop

How do we know who to invite?
Inviting the right people | Getting the right people in the room | Decide who attends | Who is coming? (+ What do they do?) | Right people | Knowing about the likely audience

How do we agree on a date?
Agree on a date | Right time in the process

How do we communicate the problem to solve?
Describing the problem | Agreeing outcomes | Selling the whole idea | Agreeing the content, purpose, objective | The outcomes you need from it | Reason why | Agreed purpose

How do we create a good physical environment?
Venue & equipment | Cleaning the whiteboards | Venue | Choosing funky music | Maximising resources & space | When should I start to prepare | Right location | Finding a good space | Post it notes not sticking | Establishing the ‘right environment’ | Which alcohol to bring | What should I bring?

How do we make sure they’re in the room?
Making invitations that people will stick to | Make them show up | Getting people enthusiastic | Convincing stakeholders to participate

What to do?
How to structure the workshop | Lack of good methods | Appropriate method for participants | Which activities lead to the right results

During the workshop

How to manage time?
Knowing when to stop | Managing time

How do we get the group to work well together?
Group dynamics | Group social dynamics

How do we introduce the session?
Setting expectations | Warming up participants | Ensuring participants are prepared

How do we create the right social environment?
Break silos | Make people think creatively | Getting the client to pick up the pen | Breaking down the fear of collaboration

How to keep participants focused?
Keeping people on track | Retaining control of the group | Keeping participants on track (work issues) | Keeping people focused | Attendees not focused on listening (wondering mind) | Agenda saboutaged | Keep open without losing control

How do we best get people to participate?
Framing the right questions inspirationally | Communicating to the attendees appropriately | Knowing my own limits and strengths | Facilitating and guiding without stifling | participants not understanding workshop method or format | Letting go during the workshop – appropriately, of course

How do we deal with Hippos*, Wallflowers & Snipers
Overcoming ‘silent stares’ | Hippos! \ Handling strength of opinion | Negative attitudes | Encouraging people who are sceptical | Commitment | Wrong PX in the room – it’s not working! | Participant’s fear of coming up with bad ideas | Getting quiet folks to speak | Ensuring that everyone involved has a say | Shouty people | Avoiding one dominant voice | What to do with bigtime extroverts | People who hate workshop format as participants | Negative attitudes.
*Hippo – Highest Paid Person’s Opinion – i.e. important people who use their power from outside the workshop to override debate within the workshop.

After the workshop

How to communicate the outcomes of the workshop?
How to collate report on results | The what | Playing back findings | Summarising the workshop’s findings | Remembering details | Not missing something | Summarising efficiently | Who is writing up? | Processing — distilling

How to communicate the worth of the workshop?
Communicating the value of the workshop

How to act on stuff after the workshop?
Getting people to own actions.

How do we deal with a lack of consensus?
Managing differing opinions | Designing together without feeling the result is a big mess of compromise | Culture problems | Getting people to collaborate | Managing dissent | Divergent personalities | The personalities of people involved | Facilitating towards a good outcome

Tips for collaborative affinity sorting

TIP: Have someone to manage the labelling while the moderator leads the discussion.

TIP: We asked teams to begin each problem statement with the words ‘How do we…?’ so that we were sure these were real problems – questions that could be answered – rather than vague ‘stuff’.

TIP: There is no scientific way to approach this – point people to a bunch of post it notes and a space on the wall/table and have them get started – it will come together (and start to make more sense to everyone) as you go.

TIP: Encourage people to call out their groupings as they go. ‘I’m starting a group about scheduling over here’, ‘Does anyone have a section on difficult people yet?’ for example. The best way to encourage this is to lead by example.

TIP: Allow and spend plenty of time on this activity – it can be quite time consuming but is a format for having some really important discussions and building a shared understanding of the problem space. Have these discussions and push the group to make sure that the problem statement labels really accurately reflect the content that they represent. Don’t allow generalisations and ensure clarity.

The outputs: What the groups came up with in their short discussions on the key problems we explored.

Problem / solution – How do we communicate the problem to solve?

1. The problem
Not used to working together, no sense of being part of a wider team. Don’t speak the same language. See the problem differently – like that old chestnut of the blind men and the elephants. Don’t think there’s a problem. Think the solution is ‘obvious’ (we should just be doing what I say). Assume ‘my view is the true view’. Legacy of wrong thinking – commitment to wrong ideas or mindset.

2. The solution
Re-framing – make sure the problem is not described from one privileged viewpoint.
Don’t assume participants agree on the problem definition. Agree on the problem.
Listen to their views and opinions – respect. Weave their different views into a view of the problem.
Get a universally respected figure to set up the problem statement.
Get an outsider to state the problem (that’s what we do with user testing – users are our ‘outsiders’).
Bring it to life with examples. Case studies.
Encourage open discussion.

TIP: Always make sure you have clearly defined the problem(s) you’re attempting to resolve in your workshops and that everyone has a shared understanding of the problem and it’s importance/relevance.

TIP: Get the information into the world! – write your problem statements down, in clear, agreed, understood words and post them up in a visible place in the workshop venue. Refer to this liberally throughout the workshop and encourages others to do so.

TIP: Make your workshops a jargon free zone – don’t let others intimidate through use of language and make sure everyone feels comfortable asking others ‘what do you mean by that term’ or ‘what does that acronym stand for’. As every, the best way to achieve this is to lead by example – use the simplest language possible to convey your point, avoid jargon where possible (including UX jargon!) and explain it wherever it’s not possible to avoid it, don’t let people use language or terminology that you don’t understand – set the example by asking others to explain, even if everyone else in the room apparently understands what is going on (often they don’t either!)

What to do? (in your workshop)

1. The problem
It’s about lack of experience, not knowing the domain or culture, lack of confidence and it being too easy to stick with past methods.

2. The solution
Just do it – try something. Practice beforehand [so you feel confident in new methods]. Learn from others, be ready to make mistakes, learn by doing. Build up a good stock of resources. Talk to clients, colleagues, etc. Share your experiences. Take part in other people’s workshops – watch what they do.

TIP: Don’t get carried away always trying to come up with new techniques to use in your workshop. Make sure you’ve got a few options for each phase of opening, exploring and closing discussions and a few for the various ‘difficult people’ you might come across and focus on becoming really great a facilitating those. Others will come on your radar over time, pick them up when you see them.

TIP: Plan your workshop so that you spend time on opening, exploring and closing each problem/issue you’re trying to resolve or understand. There are no good shortcuts – skimping on any of these phases will negate the effectiveness of your workshop. Some workshops will be mostly exploring, or mostly resolving but pretty much all workshops need to go through all these phases in order for people to engage with them properly and for you to have somewhere to go to (a specific course of action) beyond the workshop.

TIP: If you’re doing something for the first time, do a pilot first. Yes, it takes some time what you learn from it will be invaluable and then you’ll be on top form for when it really counts. Respect your workshops participants more than to experiment on them on the fly if there’s any chance it could all come to nothing.

How to keep participants focused on the subject we’re workshopping? / How do we maintain interest throughout the workshop

1. The problem
Facilitator hasn’t understood well, importance has not been communicated effectively, discussion goes in endless tangents, losing sight of the objectives, people expecting to talk about topics other than the planned ones.
Boring – the format doesn’t give people an opportunity to have fun, don’t want to be too bossy [that’s] not fun, lack of engaging activities.
Human factors – tiredness, need breaks, hunger, mood swings, good view out of the window.
Technology interrupts – email, phones.
Group dynamics – language barriers, bad mix of people in the room, people seeing people they haven’t seen in ages for a catch up, chatty people, people have their own topics they want to talk about.

2. The solution
Mixing up types of activities,
Give them sweets (controversy here over which ones and how to avoid sugar crashes!)
Plan breaks, phones and laptops off (promise they’ll have time to check later), more exciting creative activities, icebreaker to engage them from the start, make things relevant and practical, let people talk a/b themselves.

TIP: The absolute best way to keep people focussed is to make sure they understand clearly what they are doing and how it contributes to solving a problem that is important to them. This means making sure that the problem is clearly defined but also that you’re continually linking the activity you’re currently working on back to that and showing how it is all coming together.

TIP: Don’t let people feel that they’re wasting time – this means making sure that you’ve planned activities that clearly lead towards an valuable outcome, and making sure that people see where they are on the map – how does what they’re doing now get them to that outcome. Kee people in the loop, don’t go for a ‘big reveal’ at the end.

TIP: Make sure you plan reasonable length breaks at least every 90 minutes – to get more out of people over a longer stint, make sure that you are mixing up the format of your activities – get people on their feet, moving around the room, working in different groups, talking, writing, sketching – building variety into the format increases stamina.

How do we deal with difficult people / create the right environment?

1. The problem
Different knowledge levels | People feeling threatened | How do we deal with different people to get a representative outcome? |

2. The solution
Make sure you talk to people 1:1 before hand to warm them up | Communicate clear objectives | Choose activities and tactics that treat everyone equally | Herd the Hippos together | Break down hierarchies through play.

TIP: Make sure you know who is going to be in the room before you workshop, if you don’t know much about them try to get an insight into their personalities and use this knowledge to plan activities that will help get the best from the group.

TIP: Build up a repertoire of activities especially to deal with people who either dominate discussions or who are reluctant to contribute, if you find yourself ambushed by this situation in your workshop, be ready to change techniques on the fly rather than persisting with ineffective methods.

TIP: Read widely and talk to others about techniques for talking with difficult situations in workshop – memorise these and practice using them so you can confidently take control and steer the participation in a positive and productive way.

How to make meetings work: Doyle & Strauss (good on the roles that people need to play in meetings – see also Kevin Hoffman’s Slideshare ‘I hate sports but I love kickoffs)

Dealing with difficult people: Brinkman & Kirshner (has a great framework for understanding and managing difficult people and simple strategies you can put into practice)

Games People Play: Berne (helpful in understanding when, why and how you’re being pulled into a negative relationship)

Team roles at work: Belbin (useful for understanding team dynamics and the value that different types of personalities bring to teams, see also Belbin’s website to get your personal profile – for a fee)

Thanks

Giles and I have lots of people to thank – this workshop happened because Sjors Timmer willed it into being and told the world (with Matthew Solle lurking in there, too) and thanks to the generosity of Fortune Cookie for giving us the space (and letting us in early) and providing the refreshments and human support in the forms of Jeff Van Campen and Matt Lindop. The attendees threw themselves into things and came up with lots of tips and ideas which we’ve tried to capture below. We hope we’ve done them justice (comments welcome).

Those who don’t follow me on Twitter (don’t worry, I understand. I’d probably unfollow me sometimes too!) may not know about two new UX related initiatives I’m involved in at the moment. Thought you might find them interesting.

UX Bootcamp: this scratches a personal itch to spend a chunk of time intensively updating my HTML/CSS skills so that I can ditch Omnigraffle and do my prototyping in code. Our first Bootcamp will be held in July and we’re planning to do an Advanced Prototyping Bootcamp where we’ll get busy with JavaScript libraries, and a Visual Design Bootcamp where we’ll skill up in all things grids, typography and colour theory.

UX Tuesday: is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I do a lot of UX Consulting work with start ups but a project by project engagement model is sometimes a little frustrating. UX Tuesday is a monthly, affordable Pay As You Go UX Clinic for Start Ups where founders and their teams can come to learn more about User Experience and to work on some of their own UX Challenges with a team of really experienced User Experience Consultants.
We’re currently running a survey to learn more about what Start Ups are doing and what they want to know about User Experience – complete the survey and be in the running to win a free company ticket to UX Tuesday!

These are both a little experimental and I’m really interested to see how they go and what we can learn from them. Come check it out if you’re interested or please pass details on to anyone you know who might be interested. I’ll keep you posted re: progress.

If you’ve spent any time hiring User Experience Designers chances are that they’ve shown you some examples of their work in a portfolio with the following disclaimer:

don’t look at the website though, it’s terrible.

We’re currently operating with this tacit agreement that you can do great design ‘in theory’ but that it’s not our fault if that design never makes it to market. Or if it gets totally transformed so that it’s unrecognisable by the time it goes live.

Can we really go on like this? Doesn’t it make you question your own existence?

Sure, there are a LOT of things that come into play between the time you present your awesome design and when the code hits the live server, but it seems to me that, as UXers and designers, we’re largely stepping away from the plate to wash our hands clean of responsibility for what happens. (How’d you like that mixed metaphor?)

I think we might be letting ourselves off a little too lightly and, for myself, I’m going to take starting a lot more personal responsibility for whether and how much of my design sees the light of day by thinking more about:

the nature of my engagement with clients and the shape of my projects – as a freelancer, the way that I engage with clients can vary a lot from client to client. I’m going to think more about how I can design engagements that maximise the chances of good design going live (this is part of the reason I recently kicked off UX Tuesdays)

communicating design and user experience strategy – are you spending enough time on communicating your design to the project stakeholders? Are you giving them tools that they can use to help make good decisions as they move through the implementation process (where, let’s face it, some of the most important design decisions are made in the absence of a designer). Do your clients/managers understand the implications of the decisions they’re making on the integrity of the user experience? Quick tip: a functional spec does not tick this box.

staying in the debate – are you still around when your design is being taken apart? are you engaging in a discussion to help save your design work? It’s easy to swan off like a princess mumbling under your breath about people who don’t appreciate good design work when they see it. Are you helping them (sometimes with a little force) to learn to appreciate it?

making sure you’re designing things that can be implemented – it’s all well and good to design a thing of beauty but does the team have the resources to bring it to life? Have you made something that’s beyond their current capability? If so, then, how good is your design really?

From this point forward I’m taking personal responsibility for the design that goes live, no matter how far it is from the documents I might show you from my portfolio.

In the Drupal community they say ‘talk is silver, code is gold‘.

Let’s make a new UX motto: ‘portfolios are silver, live design is gold‘.

Let’s own the work that goes live, understand and explain why it is as it is, and work on the skills we need to make sure more good design actually makes it over the line. Otherwise, what’s the point?

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About me

My name is Leisa Reichelt. I am the Head of User Research at the Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office.

I lead a team of great researchers who work in agile, multidisciplinary digital teams to help continuously connect the people who design products with the people who will use them and support experimentation and ongoing learning in product design.

If you're interested in working with me or would like to talk more please email me